Not quite the neighbors most would like to have

Acres Homes stunned to find sex offenders in their midst

The high-risk sex offenders living at a halfway house in the Acres Homes community must wear ankle monitors while in civil custody after finishing their prison sentences.

The high-risk sex offenders living at a halfway house in the Acres Homes community must wear ankle monitors while in civil custody after finishing their prison sentences.

Photo: Mayra Beltran, Staff

Image 2 of 2

The high-risk sex offenders living at a halfway house in the Acres Homes community must wear ankle monitors while in civil custody after finishing their prison sentences.

The high-risk sex offenders living at a halfway house in the Acres Homes community must wear ankle monitors while in civil custody after finishing their prison sentences.

Photo: Mayra Beltran, Staff

Not quite the neighbors most would like to have

1 / 2

Back to Gallery

Thirty sex offenders - allegedly so dangerous that state officials have kept them in custody after they completed their prison sentences - were quietly moved into neighborhoods in Houston and Austin a month ago with no advance notice to the public.

In Houston, at least 23 of the men were crowded into an Acres Homes house that city inspectors have red-tagged for not having the necessary building permits; a city fire inspection also turned up violations.

Residents say they were not given proper notice, as required by state law, that the men in the state's so-called Violent Sex Offender Management program were being moved in as their neighbors.

Neither were the area's legislators, who demanded Wednesday that the offenders be moved out as soon as possible.

Translator

To read this article in one of Houston's most-spoken languages, click on the button below.

On March 6, Texas voters will decide who will carry the Democratic party's mantle into the battle for governor and a slew of other statewide offices. Click here for full coverage of the primary elections. Find our voters guide here.

"This was not just a bad idea, it was a very bad idea that no one thought through, at any level," said Democratic state Rep. Sylvester Turner, whose district includes the north Houston subdivision. "This should not happen in anyone's neighborhood. … No one should have to fear that they will wake up one day and find there are 23 violent sex offenders living next door."

State officials confirmed Wednesday that 21 offenders were moved in late February to True Safe Haven, a boarding home at 9300 W. Montgomery in Houston, and nine were moved to Burke's Supervised Living in the 2600 block of Wheless Lane in Austin.

While state officials declined to identify the offenders, the Houston Chronicle confirmed that the list at the Houston site includes several who were convicted of rape and sex crimes against people ranging from children to the elderly. Each is required to comply with strict rules regarding work and treatment, and wears a satellite-monitoring ankle bracelet to track his whereabouts.

All were relocated from the Southwest Texas Transitional Treatment Center at 10950 Beaumont Highway in east Harris County, a halfway house for parolees where they had been held for several years. State records show the company that runs the center, The GEO Group, gave notice in August that the contract to house the sex offenders was being canceled on March 1.

Program began in 1990s

Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire, a Houston Democrat whose district includes the Acres Homes site, demanded that the head of the agency that manages the state's civil commitment program for approximately 320 offenders be fired.

That official, Allison Taylor of Austin, could not be reached for comment on the decision to move the offenders.

State records and other officials confirmed that the move had been contemplated for months, after Whitmire and prison officials complained the program was filling badly needed halfway-house beds in a lockup-style facility, even though the civil commitment program is supposed to be an outpatient program.

The civil commitment program was created by the Legislature in the late 1990s as a way to keep dangerous pedophiles and other violent sex offenders who had served their prison sentences under some form of super­vision so they wouldn't be committing new crimes.

Monica Thomas, the owner of the Houston residence, referred questions to her lawyer, who did not return a call.

'Not the right place'

Officials said offenders in the program had been housed at the Beaumont Highway halfway house for about a decade. Whitmire said with halfway-house beds at a premium, and hundreds of regular state convicts backlogged in state prisons, "(It) was absolutely not the right place for these violent sex offenders."

"They were supposed to find a suitable place to relocate these men, but residential neighborhoods are absolutely not suitable," he said. "On state prison property or in an industrial area or someplace else, but not in a residential neighborhood near schools and churches and families."

Turner agreed.

"This area is not a cesspool and it should not be a dumping ground for these types of offenders, but that's what the state did," Turner said.

"From what we've been told, that facility was never designed to house that many people, it does not meet standards and it never should have been selected," he said.

Turner said he intends to file a measure when the Legislature reconvenes in January 2015 that would block such placement of civil-committed offenders without full public notice. Whitmire called for an investigation into the matter.

Surprise in mailbox

For neighbors like Leroy Flowers, 81, who lives just over a block from the True Safe Haven site, the lawmakers' demands are spot on.

As president of the Montgomery Terrace Civic Club, Flowers was surprised when a dozen postcards showed up in his mailbox recently notifying him that civil-commitment sex offenders were moving nearby.

The next day, 11 more cards showed up, he said.

"This is the first notice I had … and now I guess they were there for some time before that," said Flowers, a retired space program engineer, echoing sentiments of several neighbors. "It's terrible. Why did they drop them in our neighborhood? That's what everyone wants to know. They need to move them out."

The offenders were moved to the Houston site in late February, but were not registered with the state's sex offender database until March 19. Texas law requires seven days notice before an offender in the civil commitment program is relocated, and they must be registered no more than seven days after being moved, state officials said.

At least four schools are located within a mile of True Safe Haven. A church is across the street, as is the Houston Police Department's north patrol division office.

Houston Public Works spokesman Gary Norman acknowledged that a building on the Acres Homes property - the one state officials say the offenders are living in - was red-tagged late last month because the owner did not have the proper building permits.

He said city inspectors first visited the site on March 14, after receiving a 311 complaint. A second visit 10 days later revealed a second building on the property that showed signs of construction, Norman said.

A follow-up visit is scheduled at the property on April 9.

On March 25, a city fire inspector found the property had no safety evacuation plan, no smoke detectors and no approved fire extinguishers.

Crowded conditions

Nancy Bunin, a Houston attorney representing one of the men housed at True Safe Haven, said she visited the halfway house a week ago.

She described seeing more than a dozen men living in cramped quarters, and heard complaints from the men about inadequate bathrooms and sleeping quarters.